Search This Blog

Labels

Sunday, April 8, 2012

The Temptation of St. Anthony by Salvator Rosa and Salvador Dali's vision of it

"Keep silent unless what you are
going to say is more important than silence" – Salvator
Rosa

Salvator Rosa's self-portrait

Salvator Rosa was born in Naples in
1615, and trained in the studio of the Spanish artist Juseppe de
Ribera. While Rosa had a facile genius at painting, he pursued a wide
variety of arts: music, poetry, writing, etching, and
acting.However,
works, satires as well as the paintings of Salvator Rosa, deserve more
attention than they have generally received, even today. Salvator
Rosa longed to be considered a philosopher-painter, and to win a
reputation for his learned representation of novel subjects.

His
scenes of witchcraft reveal his interest in the irrational and less
conventional intellectual preoccupations of his age. These also
formed the background to his etchings, and to the satires which he
wrote. Maybe the best presentation of that love for irrational and
unnatural can be found on his eerie and beautiful painting, The
Temptation of St. Anthony, which is one of the first paintings of
that kind, representing a demon tempting or attacking St. Anthony,
the demon that is uncommon to Rosa’s age and culture, kinda like he
got out of a 20th century horror movie, while the director
was on acid. Or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998). Take a look at the
masterpiece.

The Temptation of St. Anthony - Salvator Rosa (1645)

Then Salvador Dali, in
1946, almost exactly 300 years later, painted his version of what
might tempted St. Anthony (He had many temptations throughout art
history, unfortunately for him).

The Temptation of St. Anthony - Salvador Dali(1946)

The temptations in Dalí’s
painting arrive in the form of a nightmarish parade. In this picture
temptation appears to Saint Anthony first as a horse,
representing strength. Then lust, represented by a nude woman balancing on a teetering pedestal. The spider-legged elephants are
topped with obelisks, some may see it as phallic towers; and some sort of ornate sex palace. But it
appears as though St. Anthony’s faith is about to topple them all.

Many say that Dali drew a great deal of
inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch’s work, who also painted The
Temptation of St. Anthony,

The Temptation of St. Anthony (Center piece) - HieronymusBosch (1505)

and he really found
inspiration from time to time in Bosch’s work, but as I got the
impression searching the internet, nobody connects Dali and Rosa,
even in a sentence. In my opinion, here he used Salvator Rosa’s
surreal painting as an inspiration, especially if you look at the
perspective, and overall impression which both paintings give.

So, which one do you like better?
More
on Dali’s life and work coming, as well.